Clay's Ark

Book 3 in the Patternist series

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It took me a bit to get into this one. I think I was hung up, initially, on how this book fits into the series.

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When we left things at the end of the second book, there was a small community of special individuals in California around 1940. This book begins in outer space and is set in 2022. For a while I spent mental energy on trying to fill in the gap between this book and the last, but it was not necessary. This book easily stands alone.

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“Want to hear something funny, Doc?” Eli said in an oddly distant voice. He held his wrist where Blake could see it and pointed to a small double scar that looked black against his gray-brown skin. “A couple of weeks ago while I was helping with the building, I got careless about where I put my hand. A rattlesnake bit me.” Eli laughed hollowly. “You know, the damn thing died.”

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He turned stiffly and went to the door, no longer laughing.

I like that the “good guys” and “bad guys” in this book are not clear, and indeed our perception of who gets what label shifts several times in the course of the story.

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I also like that the character we initially understand to be weak and near death is the one who ends up being flexible and sturdy.

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Again, in this book, we are faced with genetically mutated humans who are sexually interested in family members because of the extraterrestrial organisms that took them over.

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More silence. Then: “What are you that you can sit there and admit what she said is true?”

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“I’m what you are, Andy— host to millions, or more likely billions, of extraterrestrials.”

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Zeriam lunged at him, swinging. Zeriam was faster and better coordinated than he had been, but he was not yet significantly stronger.

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Eli caught him, held him easily. “Andy, if you don’t sit your ass down or lie down, you’re going to make me hurt you.”

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Zeriam stared at him, then burst into bitter laughter. “Hurt me? Man, you’ve killed me. You’ve killed . . . Shit, you may have killed everybody. Who knows how far this plague of yours will spread.”

And, again, humanity is faced with whether or not they want to die or evolve in cooperation with the organism - an organism that isn’t present in the first two books of this series, btw.

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I assume (and hope!) that in the fourth and final book of the series the two story lines will converge.

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This is a great read because the world Octavia Butler has created is so solid and revolting.

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